Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The United Nations guideline only defines trees (as carbon absorbers) based on high, without any detail of the species. Therefore, he argued that the proposal will allow Indonesia to receive more benefits from REDD based on the expansion of green areas.

However, this reason in fact sounds funny. The basic paradigm of REDD is avoiding deforestation. The incentives of this scheme are based on the ability of a country to avoid deforestation from its natural forest. Donors are not stupid and do not facilitate funding for areas that are not naturally forested. It seems to be that the Indonesian government would like to receive double benefits from oil palm: the investment on plantation development as well as REDD compensation from its status as trees. Are they joking?

This is actually the reason why we should not think REDD is identical to carbon trading. If REDD is identical to carbon trade, and forests are only perceived as carbon capturers, this mechanism is dangerous. Forest rehabilitation will not consider forest as integrated ecosystems and the importance of biodiversity will be neglected.... The Jakarta Post Yansen , Queensland Fri, 03/19/2010 11:09 AM Opinion

Greens' Safe Climate Bill

Travelling with a light footprint
Australia's cities and suburbs are increasingly being built around cars, not people, and more of our intercity travel and freight is going by road or air instead of rail. In a world where peak oil and climate change are converging, this has to change fast.
We have to redesign our cities for people instead of cars, with urban villages connected by fast, efficient and convenient buses, trams and trains, cycleways and pedestrian paths. We have to give ourselves real alternatives to flying between cities. We have to end the subsidies to fossil fuel based transport. We have to think a few steps into the future, instead of repeating the same old mistakes of the past. ReadMore [pdf]